1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to sales and inventory management systems, and more particularly to a sales system that enables customers to view alternative items in the event the customer orders an item that is out of stock, and to a sales and inventory system that enables tracking of requests for items in a store in which the sales floor is remote from the stockroom.
2. Description of the Related Art
One common problem that is faced by retail stores, especially those such as shoe stores, in which over 500 shoe and sneaker styles may be on display at any given time, is ensuring that all items that are on display are in the store's inventory. If displayed items are not in inventory, customer dissatisfaction and loss of sales may result. Normally, if a desired shoe style is out of inventory, the customer will either (i) return to the displays and select another style, which may itself be out of inventory, or (ii) go to a different store, each of which results in customer dissatisfaction. Accordingly, it would be desirable to have a system that, once a sales person determines from a sales computer that a selected style of shoe is out of stock, enables the customer to select from alternative styles of shoes similar to those originally selected by the customer, and to view the shoes on the sales computer, without the necessity of returning to the store display.
Various electronic catalog systems are known in the art. Such catalogs systems are shown, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,319,542; 4,992,940; 3,757,037; 5,206,804; 5,367,627; 5,291,395; and 4,984,155. None of these systems, however, provides a method of and apparatus for enabling a store customer to view alternative styles similar to a selected style that is out of inventory so as to avid customer dissatisfaction.
In shoe and sneaker stores, when a style is selected by a customer in a particular size, the selected pair of shoes or sneakers is retrieved from a stockroom so that the customer may try the shoes on. While in some retail establishments the salespersons themselves retrieve the desired shoes from stock, in other stores an order is transmitted to a stockroom where the order is picked by a stock person and transmitted to the sales floor. The productivity of the stockroom personnel is critical in maintaining customer satisfaction in that if a customer must wait too long for the desired shoes to be retrieved, the customer may leave. Also, it is important to monitor the movement of shoes between the sales floor and the stockroom to prevent shoplifting and to monitor inventory. Accordingly, it would be desirable to have a system wherein the productivity of the salespersons and the stockroom personnel may be measured and in which the movement of items between the sales floor and stockroom is carefully monitored.